Primitive  and  Catholic 
Christianity 


BY 


ARTHUR  CUSHMAN  McGIFFERT 


r  i 


Primitive  and  Catholic 
Christianity 


AN  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  UPON  THE  OCCASION  OF  HIS  INDUCTION  INTO  THE  WASHBURN 

PROFESSORSHIP   OF  CHURCH   HISTORY   IN  THE  UNION 

THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY.  NEW  YORK, 

BV    THE 

REV.  ARTHUR  CUSHMAN  iVlcGlFFERT,  Ph.D.,  D.  D. 


TOGETHER  WITH  THE  CHARGE  ON  BEHALF  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  DIRECTORS 


REV.  JAMES  M.  LUDLOW,  D.  D.,  L.H.D. 


September  28th,  1893. 


New  York : 

John   C.  Rankin   Co.,  Printers, 

34  cortlandt   street. 

ie93- 


CHARGE   TO    PROF.   McGIFFERT 


BY 


JAMES  M.  LUDLOW,  D.  D.,  L  H.  D. 


My  dear  Brother: — It  does  not  seem  to  be  according  to 
the  fitness  of  things  that  I  should  charge  you  regarding  the 
duties  of  a  Professor  of  Church  History.  The  Directors  of  the 
Seminary  have  called  you  to  this  chair  because  they  believe 
that,  from  your  eminent  attainments  in  this  study  and  your  suc- 
cessful career  as  a  teacher  of  it,  you  yourself,  perhaps,  know 
more  about  such  duties  than  any  one  else.  A  distinguished 
jurist,  when  asked  why  he  seemed  to  enjoy  the  sermons  of  a 
certain  illiterate  preacher,  replied  that  the  preacher  did  not 
know  enough  to  say  anything  beyond  the  commonplace,  and 
he  had  observed  that  commonplace  ideas  were  the  most 
important.  Now,  my  brother,  if  you  will  assume  the  attitude 
of  that  distinguished  listener,  we  shall  be  on  excellent  terms, 
and  I  will  speak  freely. 

I  charge  you  to  remember  that  you  are  to  instruct  in 
Church  History  bands  of  young  men  who  are  preparing  them- 
selves for  the  duties  of  the  active  ministry. 

A  Seminary  professor  is  sometimes  looked  upon  by  the 
unknowing  as  a  typical  Protestant  recluse.  But  I  am  sure  that 
these  hundreds  of  quick-brained  young  men,  impatient  of  what- 
ever does  not  help  them  on  to  their  work,  your  associates  in 
the  Faculty,  who  are  leaders  in  the  highest  and  most  practical 


religious  movements  of  our  day,  and,  most  of  all,  your  own 
consecrated  activity  of  mind  and  heart,  will  prevent  your  ever 
being  regarded  as  such. 

I  can  imagine  that  such  a  position  as  you  will  occupy  here 
might  suggest  ambition  to  make  for  yourself  a  great  repute  for 
historical  scholarship.  Lay  aside  all  anxiety  about  that.  Your 
acquirements  already,  your  ability,  your  habit  of  looking  far 
beneath  the  surface  of  ordinary  historical  reading,  will  keep 
your  light  from  under  the  bushel. 

I  imagine  also  that  with  your  scholarly  disposition  you 
might  be  tempted  to  dive  where  your  classes,  who  are  only 
learning  to  swim,  may  be  unable  to  follow.  If  so,  please 
reserve  your  deep  sea  soundings  for  report  in  published 
volumes,  and  the  archives  of  the  learned  societies,  unless  you 
can  have  a  select  class  of  those  whom  you  are  to  make  future 
professors.  The  ordinary  student  is  not  qualified  for  heavy 
research  ;  but  he  is  prepared  to  receive  from  such  an  instructor 
as  you  a  fund  of  usable  information,  and  a  fascination  with 
the  study  which  will  make  the  field  of  Church  History  a 
life-long  delight  and  profit. 

We  install  you  to-day  to  be  a  practical  trainer  of  these 
young  men  who  are  to  go  out  to  the  common  people  and 
instruct  them  in  the  doctrine  and  precepts  of  Christ ;  and  we 
commit  to  you  particularly  the  duty  of  furnishing  them  that 
information  which  shall  be  most  helpful  to  them,  so  far  as  it 
can  be  gathered  from  the  history  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 

What  is  Church  History  ?  Luke  says,  at  the  opening  of  the 
Book  ot  Acts,  that  his  former  treatise,  covering  the  life-time  of 
our  Lord  in  the  fiesh,  was  of  that  **  which  Jesus  began  both  to 
do  and  teach  until  the  day  in  which  he  was  taken  up."  Church 
History,  then,  is  the  continuation  of  that  life  of  Christ  as  he  is 
resident  in  his  people  through  the  Holy  Ghost.  Yet  the  study 
of  Church  History  necessarily  involves  a  great  deal  more  than 
this.     Though    Christ's    kingdom    is   not  of  the  world,  it  has 


had  continual  relation  with  the  secular  powers.  Though  it  is 
"the  pillar  and  ground  of  the  truth,"  it  has  had  to  deal  with 
errorists.  Though  it  is  pervaded  with  his  Spirit,  it  has  been 
tainted  with  much  that  is  not  of  his  Spirit,  that  is  utterly 
human,  not  to  say  devihsh.  The  Mississippi  is  mingled  Avith 
waters  which  are  not  supplied  from  its  springs;  but  the 
skillful  pilot  follows  the  channel:  so  it  is  the  part  of  the  wise 
student  of  Church  History  to  mark  the  true  course  of  that 
river  of  salvation  as  it  flows,  ever  widening  and  deepening 
down  through  the  ages. 

Church  History  will  exhibit  the  development  of  true  Christian 
doctrine,  the  Christ  thought ;  not  the  growth  of  its  revelation, 
for  that  we  believe  was  made  complete  in  the  New  Testament, 
but  its  development  in  the  conception  of  men.  Christ's  truth, 
as  expressed  in  the  Bible,  is  too  great  and  subtle  for  any  single 
generation,  or  any  one  stage  of  human  education,  to  understand. 
The  promise  to  "guide  into  all  truth"  has  had,  and  is  having, 
a  progressive  fulfillment.  The  grand  theologians  of  the  past, 
Augustine  and  the  men  of  Nicasa,  Calvin  and  the  men  of  West- 
minster, were  illumined,  it  may  be,  to  the  utmost  of  their 
capacity  with  the  Light  of  the  World,  but  their  thoughts  did 
not  globe  and  bound  that  light;  nor  can  this  generation,  with 
all  the  help  it  receives  from  the  past,  appreciate  its  full  beauty 
and  power.  As  a  good  instructor  in  Church  History  you  will, 
then,  not  only  enrich  the  minds  of  your  students  with  the 
marvels  of  Christian  thought  gathered  from  the  ages  ;  you  will, 
at  the  same  time,  impress  them  with  the  duty  of  great  humility 
in  their  inheritance  of  the  truth,  since  it  can  be  but  partial. 
Teach  them,  in  the  words  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  that  "  anything 
that  is  proud  is  against  the  form  of  sound  words."  Let  them 
understand  that  the  very  essence  of  heresy  is  theological 
conceit. 

Church  History  will  not  only  show  the  development  of 
the  truth  in  the  apprehension  of  the  Church,  it  will  furnish 


warning  of  the  many  ways  through  which  good  men  have  slipped 
into  error. 

For  instance,  instead  of  the  Spirit's  guidance,  as  men  have 
diligently  compared  Scripture  with  Scripture,  there  has  at 
times  floated  before  their  ardent  vision  some  spiritualistic  fancy, 
some  ignis  fatiiiis  of  the  soul-land,  which  has  flashed  its  light 
upon  detached  portions  of  Scripture,  leaving  the  rest  in  dark- 
ness.  The  readiness  with  which  whole  communities  in  dif- 
ferent ages  have  followed  such  illusions  will  suggest  to  the 
student  that  the  cause  lies  in  human  nature  itself,  and  will  put 
him  on  guard  against  the  possibility  of  even  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury superstition. 

You  will  also  show  from  abundant  illustrations  drawn  from 
your  field  how  easy  it  is  for  even  wise  men  to  adopt  very 
illogical  inferences,  where  prejudice,  self-interest,  the  enthusiasm 
of  controversy,  the  pride  of  partisanship,  indeed  any  feeling 
that  is  not  in  keeping  with  that  honesty  of  humility  which 
befits  the  religious  inquirer,  prompts  the  argument. 

You  will  also  be  able  to  convince  your  students  that  there 
is  a  limit  to  the  use  of  even  good  logic  in  forming  one's  faith. 
Many  mistakes  have  been  made  by  projecting  the  conclusions 
of  the  reason — I  use  the  word  in  its  narrow  sense — into  realms 
where  they  may  not  apply.  Engineers  la}^  on  the  great  plains 
of  the  West  what  they  call  bee-line  railroads  between  towns ; 
but  if  we  should  take  such  a  line  for  astronomical  direction,  we 
would  make  a  mistake,  because  the  line  has  been  gradually 
bending  with  the  curve  of  the  earth.  It  would  not  make  a 
bee-line  between  the  stars,  but  would  complete  a  circle,  and 
return  to  just  where  it  started.  So,  much  of  the  logic  that  is 
sufficient  for  earthly  problems  fails  when  applied  to  celestial 
truths.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  not  inclined  to  underrate  the 
reason,  but  he  confesses  the  danger  of  depending  upon  it  alone, 
''without  its  natural  complements  and  correctives,"  the  feel- 
ings and  experiences.     Fichte  said  that  God  was  too  great  for 


the  mind  to  comprehend,  we  must  therefore  receive  Him  with 
the  heart.  Herbert  Spencer,  however  much  he  may  err  in 
some  respects,  is  impregnable  in  his  proof  that  the  problems 
relating  to  the  infinite  cannot  be  handled  with  logical  certitude. 
When  men  who  make  the  most  of  reason  as  their  dependence 
confess  its  insufficiency,  it  would  be  well  for  the  men  of  faith 
if  they  depended  less  upon  it.  Church  History  is  the  great 
field  for  illustration  of  the  limit  of  the  use  of  logic  in  dealing 
with  the  problems  that  relate  to  God  and  the  soul.  How 
many  plausible  systems  have  come  up,  variant,  even  contradic- 
tory, which  cannot  be  punctured  with  a  syllogism  !  Within 
our  own  Calvinism,  how  logic — at  least  that  which  professional 
logicians  insist  is  infallible  logic — has  dwarfed  the  electing  love 
of  God  into  a  semi-fatalistic  dogma  of  Reprobation !  Your 
students  will  be  shown  many  men,  of  splendid  intellect, 
who  thought  that  they  were  weighing  the  verities  of  God,  but 
who  were  really  only  like  children  tilting  the  end  of  a  stone 
whose  whole  bulk  is  so  great  that  no  human  enginery  can 
lift  it.  They  will  learn  to  suspect  all  merely  inferential  the- 
ology, where  it  is  not  confirmed  by  indubitable  Scripture,  by 
sanctified  experience,  or  by  the  consensus  of  the  best  of  men. 

The  student  of  Church  History  will  learn  how  easily 
Christ's  truth  may  become  adulterated  with  the  notions  of  men 
that  already  prevail  in  a  community  or  age ;  how  hard  it  is  to 
overcome  the  persistence  of  the  cult.  When  the  Jews  were 
forced  to  recognize  the  truth  of  Christ  they  Judaized  it,  and 
put  the  new  wine  into  their  old  bottles.  When  the  Pagans  were 
convinced  by  Christianity,  they  at  once  proceeded  to  Paganize 
it.  The  ancient  schools  of  philosophy  each  tried  to  shape  the 
new  doctrine  according  to  their  preconceived  principles,  often 
almost  destroying  the  diamond  in  making  the  facets.  When 
they  set  the  statue  of  St.  Paul  on  the  pedestal  which  had 
been  used  for  the  statue  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  the}^  did  a  sym- 
bolical thing.     But,  as  it  was   hard  to  keep  the  age  thought 


8 

separate  from  the  Christ  thought,  so  it  is  difficult  in  reading- 
Church  History,  especially  of  the  great  symbols,  to  separate 
from  essential  Christianity  what  the  ages  have  contributed. 
This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  most  pressing  demand  upon  histori- 
cal criticism  ;  for  what  the  truth  receives  in  the  way  of  admix- 
ture from  the  passing  ages  it  is  apt  to  retain  ;  it  becomes  sacred 
in  the  e3^es  of  the  unlearned  as  Tradition. 

But  I  judge,  my  brother,  from  an  incident  which  you  will 
pardon  me  if  I  relate,  that  you  will  be  a  wise  teacher  in  this 
respect.  Some  time  ago  I  was  conversing  with  a  learned  pro- 
fessor in  one  of  our  neighboring  institutions.  We  were  discuss- 
ing professors — a  very  proper  and  profitable  subject  for  free 
handling,  you  will  admit.  I  inquired  if  there  was  in  the  coun- 
try a  man  under  fifty  years  of  age  who  was  qualified  for  the 
chair  of  Church  History.  He  replied  instantly  and  enthusiast- 
ically. Yes.  But  after  a  brief  rhapsody  on  the  scholarship 
and  rare  teaching  ability  of  the  man  he  had  in  mind,  he  quali- 
fied his  praise  by  remarking  that  perhaps  this  professor  had 
imbibed  too  much  from  his  old  preceptor,  Harnack  ;  that  in 
studying  the  Creeds  he  made  a  great  deal  of  the  times  in  which 
they  were  written ;  that,  for  instance,  instead  of  taking  the 
Nicene  Creed  as  a  pure  and  simple  deduction  from  Scripture, 
he  would  be  apt  to  see  the  marks  of  the  fourth  century  all 
over  it,  etc.  I  made  a  note  of  that  young  man,  who,  in  the 
estimate  of  my  friend,  stood  foremost  as  a  scholar  and  teacher 
of  Church  History,  and  who  insisted  upon  reading  historical 
documents  in  the  light  of  the  history  of  their  making ;  and 
when  the  occasion  arrived  I  cast  for  him  a  hearty  vote  to  fill 
this  chair  in  Union  Seminary. 

But  the  study  of  Church  History  will  not  only  suggest  to 
the  student  the  safe  methods  of  dealing  with  religious  truth, 
guarding  him  from  the  methods  which  have  proved  to  be 
unsafe  in  the  past ;  it  will  also  enrich  him  with  a  knowledge  of 
Christian  character. 


It  has  been  said  that  it  would  take  all  the  virtues  of  all 
the  Christians  that  have  ever  lived,  eliminating  all  their  defects, 
to  even  approximate  the  character  of  the  Lord  himself.  Each 
consecrated  man  can  only  exhibit  the  glory  of  the  Spirit  as  it 
shines  through  the  little  rift  of  his  peculiar  life  and  circum- 
stances. That  is  true  ;  but  through  some  of  these  little  rifts  have 
poured  marvelous  illuminations  upon  the  dark  Avays  of  men. 
A  distinguished  painter  recently  sold,  at  a  great  price,  a  port- 
folio of  his  studies — mere  studies,  patches  of  color  that  he  had 
caught  from  a  sunset,  trial  groupings,  experiments  in  form  and 
vista.  Art  students  knew  their  value ;  they  could  learn  so 
much  from  the  way  the  artist  tried  to  perfect  his  art.  Church 
History  is  a  portfolio,  filled  with  the  finest  attempts  to  express 
the  beauty  of  the  Christ  character.  What  if  none  of  them  is 
perfect !  What  if  some  of  them  are  very  crude  in  respect  to 
virtues  for  which  their  circumstances  provided  no  training  ! 
That  they  were  overtempted  by  the  excitements,  the  follies, 
the  superstitions  of  their  age  !  What  sweetness,  what  courage, 
what  self-denial,  what  spiritual  longing,  what  communings  with 
the  Master,  had  some  men  and  women,  thinking  of  whom  in 
other  respects  we  thank  God  that  we  are  not  such  as  they  ! 
Do  you  refuse  to  admire  the  cartoons  of  Raphael  because  they 
lack  perspective  ?  or  Titian's  coloring  because  he  was  deficient 
in  anatomy  ?  I  cannot  comprehend  the  state  of  mind  that  led 
a  clergyman  to  say — if  he  has  been  rightly  reported — that  in 
drawing  pulpit  illustrations  of  character  from  Church  History 
he  never  went  back  of  the  Reformation,  unless  he  went  to  the 
times  of  the  Apostles.  This  is  to  deprive  our  congregations  of 
their  inheritance  in  the  lives  and  virtues  of  the  saints  of  all 
ages.  If  any  of  the  graduates  of  this  Seminary  have  that  pur- 
pose, I  charge  you,  my  brother,  to  see  to  it  that  the  blame 
does  not  rest  with  you,  in  that  you  have  not  brought  them  into 
intellectual  contact  with  the  great  hearts  and  pure  souls  of 
those,  who,  if  they  were  not  so  wise  as  we  in  some  matters  of 


lO 

modern  discovery,  yet  adorned  the  Christianity  of  their  age  as, 
perhaps,  we  are  not  adorning  ours,  and  have  been  received  into 
heaven. 

I  have  not  time  to  speak,  as  I  would  like,  of  what  may  be 
learned  from  Church  History  of  the  best  methods  of  Christian 
work.  We  need  to  learn  from  every  possible  field  on  this  sub- 
ject ;  for  we  are  not  doing  Christ's  work  efficiently.  We  are 
not  reaching  the  masses  for  whom  He  died.  Indeed,  are  we 
intelligently  trying  to  do  so  ?  The  grand  method  is,  of  course, 
Christ's  own  method — life  on  life,  and  life  for  life.  But  that 
method  is  far  from  being  common  even  with  us  ministers. '  We 
Protestants  can  go  back  even  to  Medieval  times,  and  there 
learn  much  of  how  to  work  for  Christ.  Asia  Minor,  North 
Africa,  the  continent  of  Europe,  were  not  won  for  Him  through 
stupidity,  through  mistakes,  through  lethargy  such  as  binds 
most  of  our  communities.  Surely  no  man  Js  qualified  for 
leadership  in  Christian  work  to-day  who  ignores  the  knowledge 
of  the  statecraft  of  the  kingdom  in  the  past. 

My  dear  brother,  1  charge  you  to  send  these  young  men 
out  from  your  room,  and  out  into  the  world,  feeling  that 
they  are  not  going  alone  ;  and  that  their  comradeship  is  not 
limited  to  those  who  stand  by  their  side  in  their  own  genera- 
tion ;  but  that  they  are  the  fighting  line  in  a  grand  host  that  has 
conquered  its  way  down  through  the  centuries. 

But  I  must  not  take  time  that  belongs  to  you.  I  congratulate 
you,  my  brother,  upon  your  election  as  Professor  in  Union  Semi- 
nary. The  air  here  is  charged  with  stimulant  to  the  highest 
scholarship  and  the  deepest  consecration.  You  will  find  here  no 
restriction  to  the  freedom  of  your  study  and  speech,  but  such 
as  you  willingly  put  upon  yourself  when  you  took  the  oath  of 
your  office ;  an  oath  to  be  interpreted  by  no  narrow  ecclesias- 
tical dehverance,  but  in  the  broad  and  catholic  spirit  with 
which  the  founders  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United 
States  were  accustomed  to  write  and  read  such  covenants. 


II 

I  can  wish  you  nothing  better  than  that  your  labors  in  this 
chair  may  be  as  long  continued,  that  you  may  have  as  much 
joy  in  your  work,  and  win  as  much  love  and  reverence  from 
your  students  and  the  Church,  as  the  Great  Head  of  the 
Church  has  permitted  to  your  honored  predecessor — Dr. 
Philip  Schaff. 


Primitive  and 
Catholic  Christianity, 


Primitive  and  Catholic  Christianity. 


Gentlemen  of  the  Board  of  Directors: 

It  is  with  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility  that  I  enter  to-day 
upon  the  work  to  which  you  have  called  me,  but  it  is  with  no 
feeling  of  sadness.     I  delight  to  be  here  at  your  bidding,  and 
my   mind    dwells  with    eager   anticipation    upon   the    days    of 
service  which  are  now  at  hand.     I  have  been  long  enough   in 
my  chosen  work  to  realize  all  too  well  m}^  own  deficiencies, 
but  I  do  not  love  that  work  the  less ;  indeed,  as  the  sense  of 
its  vastness  has  grown  upon  me  I  have  given  myself  to  it  with 
an  increasing  joy  of  consecration  ;  and  that  joy  to-day  is  greatly 
enhanced,  for  I  love  and  honor  Union  Seminary  with  the  affec- 
tionate  loyalty   of  a  devoted  son,  and  I  know   of  no  grander 
privilege  than  has  now   become   mine.     I  do  not  enter  lightly 
upon  her  service,    for  I  know  her  high  ideals  and  the   degree 
to  which   those  ideals    have   been   realized,  not  only  in  other 
departments,  but  also  in  that  in  which  it  is  to  be  my  privilege 
to  labor.     The  memory  of   Dr.  Hitchcock  and  the  living  pres- 
ence of  Dr.  Schaff  almost  overwhelm  me  as  I  think  of  all  that 
that  department  has  been  in  their  hands.     None  can  more  fully 
realize  it  than  those  (and  how  many  there  were  of  us  I )   whose 
training  in  Church    History  began   under  the  influence  of  Dr. 
Hitchcock's  lectures  and   of   Dr.  Schaff's  books.     Were  it  the 
duty  of  the  new  incumbent  of  the  chair  of  Church  History  to 
do  what  they  have  done  he  could  not  have  summoned  sufficient 
boldness  to  accept  your  call.     But  it  is  the  privilege  of  those 
of  us  who  are  young  to  enter  into  the  heritage  of  the  fathers, 


i6 

and  it  is  our  filial  joy  to  carry  on  their  work,  even  though  we 
know  all  too  well  the  imperfections  that  must  attend  our 
-efforts. 

But  I  have  to-day  a  peculiar  reason  for  gratitude,  for  it  is 
my  privilege  to  enjoy  the  welcome  and  to  receive  the  benedic- 
tion of  my  honored  predecessor,  Avho  is  at  the  same  time  my 
beloved  teacher  and  friend.  His  untiring  energy,  his  amazing 
acquisitions,  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  truth,  his  broad  sym- 
pathies, his  quickness  to  appreciate  the  Christian  spirit  wher- 
ever found,  will  always  be  an  incentive  and  an  inspiration  to 
his  successor. 

It  adds  not  a  little  to  my  sense  of  responsibility,  but  it  is 
a  source  of  profound  satisfaction,  to  find  myself  to-day  asso- 
ciated as  a  colleague  with  so  many  of  the  honored  instructors 
at  whose  feet  I  sat  a  learner,  during  three  rich  and  memorable 
years.  The  confidence  they  have  shown  in  me  and  the  kind 
welcome  they  have  accorded  me  are  deeply  appreciated.  Re- 
lying upon  their  friendly  sympathy  and  upon  your  kind  indul- 
gence I  enter  upon  my  work  with  a  prayer  for  the  blessing  of 
Almighty  God. 

It  becomes  my  duty  at  this  time  to  address  you  upon  some 

theme  connected  with  the  department  of  instruction  to  which 

I  have  been  called.     The  theme  that   I   have  chosen  may   be 

styled 

"  Primitive  and  Catholic  Christianity." 

The  subject  of  study  in  Church  History,  as  in  all  the  theo- 
logical sciences,  is  Christianity  itself.  To  contribute  to  a  clearer 
and  fuller  understanding  of  Christianity  I  apprehend  to  be 
their  common  object,  and  the  object  is  the  same  whether  our 
purpose  be  scientific  or  practical ;  for  an  adequate  knowledge 
of  Christianity,  of  its  nature,  its  spirit,  its  aims;  the  ability  to 
distinguish  between  its  essential  and  non-essential  elements, 
between  that  in  it  which  is  of  permanent  and  universal  worth, 
and  that  which  is  of  only  temporary  and  local  significance — all 


17 

this  is  of  scientific  interest  and  at  the  same  time  of  the  utmost 
practical  importance.  We  study  Christian  History  then — 
whether  in  the  university  or  in  the  theological  sem.inary, 
whether  for  purely  scientific  or  for  purely  practical  purposes 
— we  study  Christian  History  in  order  better  to  understand 
Christianity.  This  purpose  we  keep  constantly  in  view  ;  in  it 
we  find  our  controlling  principle,  and  we  shape  our  method 
accordingly. 

But  the  Christian  Church,  like  every  other  organism, 
exists  and  has  existed  from  the  beginning,  not  in  solitary  isola- 
tion, but  in  the  midst  of  an  environment.  It  must,  therefore,  be 
an  important  part  of  the  historian's  task  to  study  this  environ- 
ment and  to  determine  its  effect  upon  the  organism — to 
determine  in  what  respects  and  to  what  extent,  if  at  all,  it  has 
affected  or  modified  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  conceivably 
possible,  indeed,  that  the  development  which  Christianity  has 
undergone  since  the  days  of  Christ  has  been  the  independent 
and  exclusive  unfolding  of  the  original  germ,  and  that  the  en- 
vironment has  meant  nothing  more  than  room  to  live  and  grow ; 
or  it  is  possible,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  its  growth  it  has 
assimilated  and  thus  made  its  own  many  elements  from  without ; 
while  it  is  still  farther  possible  that  Christianity  in  its  present 
form  contains  foreign  substances,  which  have  never  been  and 
cannot  be  assimilated,  which  can  never  form  a  part  of  its  life, 
but  lie  embedded  in  its  structure  or  constitute  excrescences 
upon  its  surface.  It  is  the  special  task  of  the  historian  to  dis- 
cover by  a  careful  study  of  Christianity  at  successive  stages  of 
its  career  whether  it  has  undergone  any  transformations,  and, 
if  so,  what  those  transformations  are.  It  is  his  duty,  if 
Christianity  has  assimilated  any  elements  from  without,  or  if  it 
has  received  any  artificial  accretions,  to  trace  those  elements 
or  accretions  to  their  sources,  to  show  when  and  how  they  be- 
came grafted  upon  or  attached  to  the  original  stock.  But  thej 
historian's  work   is  not   final.     He  is  not  called  upon  to  pass' 


i8 

judgment  upon  those  assimilations  or  accretions.  He  is  not 
called  upon  to  defend  or  to  condemn  them  as  consonant  or  dis- 
sonant with  the  essential  character  of  Christianity.  That  is  the 
theologian's  work.  The  fact  that  any  element  of  our  system  is 
of  later  growth  than  Christianity  itself  does  not  necessarily 
condemn  it,  nor  even  the  fact  that  it  is  of  foreign  growth  ;  but 
the  discovery  of  the  fact  is  sufficient  to  put  such  an  element  on 
trial.  It  must  be  required  to  vindicate  its  right  to  a  place 
within  the  Christian  system,  and  that  it  can  do,  not  by  appeal- 
ing to  its  antiquity  or  to  the  universal  favor  which  it  has  enjoyed 
— neither  age  nor  general  prevalence  constitutes  a  guarantee  of 
truth — but  only  by  showing  its  vital  relation  to,  or  at  least  its 
harmony  with,  Christianity  itself. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  not  inappropriate  that  I  should  discuss 
on  this  occasion  what  I  believe  to  be  the  most  vital  and  far- 
reaching  transformation  that  Christianity  has  ever  undergone — 
a  transformation,  the  effects  of  which  the  entire  Christian 
Church  still  feels,  and  which  has  in  my  opinion  done  more  than 
anything  else  to  conceal  Christianity's  original  form  and  to 
obscure  its  true  character.  I  refer  to  the  transformation  of  the 
primitive  into  the  Catholic  Church — a  transformation  which 
was  practically  complete  before  the  end  of  the  second  century 
of  the  Church's  life. 

The  significance  of  this  transformation  has  not  been  always 
and  everywhere  realized.  There  are  other  and  later  changes, 
indeed,  which  impress  the  casual  observer  more  forcibly,  and 
seem  to  him  more  worthy  of  notice  :  the  cessation  of  persecu- 
tion with  the  accession  of  Constantine,  and  the  subsequent  union 
of  Church  and  State ;  the  preaching  of  Christianity  to  the  bar- 
barians of  western  and  northern  Europe  ;  the  development  of 
the  Greek  patriarchate  and  of  the  Roman  papacy  ;  the  formation 
of  the  elaborate  liturgies  of  the  Eastern  and  Western  Churches ; 
the  rise  of  saint  and  image  worship,  of  the  confessional  and  of 
the    mass ;    the    growth   of    monasticism,    which   began   with 


19 

renouncing  the  world  and  ended  with  subjugating  it ;  the 
development  of  Nicene  trinitarianism,  of  the  Chalcedonian 
Christology,  of  the  Augustinian  anthropology  and  of  the  An- 
selmic  theory  of  the  atonement ;  many  of  these  might  seem  at 
first  sight  of  greater  historical  significance  than  any  changes 
which  took  place  during  the  first  two  centuries,  and  at  least 
some  of  them  have  been  apparently  so  regarded  by  Church 
historians,  for  they  have  supplied  them  with  their  principles 
of  division,  while  the  transformation  to  which  I  have  referred — 
the  transformation  of  the  primitive  into  the  Catholic  Church,  of 
the  Church  of  the  Apostles  into  that  of  the  old  Catholic  fathers 
— has  never  been  thought  worthy  of  such  special  prominence. 
It  is  not  my  purpose  in  this  address  to  trace  that  momentous 
transformation  in  all  its  features.  I  desire  simply  to  point  out 
and  to  explain,  as  fully  as  time  will  permit,  the  change  of  spirit 
which  constitutes  its  essence. 

The  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity  is  the  spirit  of  religious 
individualism,  based  upon  the  felt  presence  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
It  was  the  universal  conviction  of  the  primitive  Church  that 
every  Christian  believer  enjoys  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  through  whom  he  communes  with  God,  and 
receives  illumination,  inspiration  and  strength  sufficient  for 
his  daily  needs.  The  presence  of  the  Spirit  was  realized  by 
these  primitive  Christians  in  a  most  vivid  way.  It  meant  the 
power  to  work  miracles,  to  speak  with  tongues,  to  utter  proph- 
ecies (Cf.  Mark  xvi.,  17-18,  and  Acts  ii.,  16,  seq.).  Their  belief 
in  it  influenced  all  their  living  and  thinking.  They  felt  them- 
selves to  be  sons  of  God,  strangers  and  pilgrims  upon  the  earth, 
citizens  of  a  heavenly  kingdom,  Avhich  was  soon  to  be  revealed, 
and  they  lived  accordingly ;  lived  lives  whose  purity  and 
holiness  should  befit  their  heavenly  calling  and  destiny. 
The  heavenliness,  divineness,  supernaturalness  of  the  Christian 
life — the  fact  that  it  was  lived  with  God  and  under  his  direct 
control — was  to  them  its  essential  and  distinctive  feature.     They 


20 

were  bound  to  their  Christian  brethren  by  their  common  con- 
sciousness of  the  presence  of  the  Divine,  and  by  their  posses- 
sion of  a  common  ideal  and  of  a  common  hope.  But  there  was 
no  external  bond  of  unity — except  such  as  was  supplied  by  their 
common  forms  of  worship  and  by  their  meetings  for  mutual 
edification  and  comfort.  The  Church  was  not  a  visible  institu- 
tion of  which  the  local  congregations  formed  a  part  and  to 
which  all  believers  belonged.  It  was  simply  the  ''  communion 
of  saints,"  holy  because  they  were  holy,  enjoying  the  presence  of 
the  Spirit  because  composed  of  men  in  whom  the  Spirit  dwelt. 
The  Church  had,  in  fact,  no  institutional  character  ;  it  possessed 
nothing  apart  from  its  members.  It  did  not  constitute  in 
any  sense  a  channel  of  divine  grace,  nor  was  it,  independently  of 
them,  a  recipient  or  custodian  of  divine  revelations.  The 
only  channel  of  divine  grace  was  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  the  only 
recipients  and  custodians  of  divine  revelations  were  Christian 
believers.  The  phrase  ''  Catholic  Church,"  which  occurs  very 
rarely  in  the  period  with  which  we  are  dealing,  never  in  that 
period  means  what  it  came  to  mean  before  the  close  of  the 
second  century.  It  was  used,  if  used  at  all,  in  early  generations, 
only  to  express  the  unorganized  sum  of  believers  scattered 
over  the  whole  earth.  It  gives  utterance  to  the  conception  of 
their  ideal  unity,  which  was  to  be  visibly  realized  only  at  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Lord.  ''  As  this  broken  bread 
was  scattered  upon  the  mountains  and  gathered  together  became 
one,  so  let  thy  Church  be  gathered  together  from  the  ends  of 
the  earth  into  thy  kingdom "  runs  the  Eucharistic  prayer  in 
the  Didache. 

By  the  opening  of  the  third  century,  all  these  conceptions 
had  practically  disappeared.  The  Church  was  no  longer  the 
mere  totality  of  believers.  It  was  the  visible  Kingdom  of  God — 
a  concrete  external  organism,  with  a  recognized  constitution, 
and  under  the  control  of  and  dependent  upon  duly  appointed 
and  ordained  officers,   who  were  supposed   to   have  received 


21 


from   God  in  ordination  a  special  official  grace.     As  a  divinel 
institution,  it  was  possessed  of  divine  grace  and  empowered  toj 
dispense  that  grace  to  its  members ;  as  the  exclusive  custodian' 
of  divine  revelation,  it  was  its  duty  to  declare   God's  will  to 
them.     Christians  could   no  longer  approach  God  directly  and 
commune    with    him    through   the    Holy    Spirit ;  they    could 
no  longer  receive  revelations  immediately  from  him,  but  they 
must  look  to  the  divinely  appointed  institution  for  guidance,  for 
instruction,    for   all   their   spiritual    blessings.     Outside   of   it, 
indeed,  salvation  itself  was  impossible,  for  it  was  the  exclusive 
channel  of  divine  grace.     It  would  be  interesting  to  note  the 
various  doctrines  that  are  implicitly  involved,  if  not  expressly 
avowed,  in  this  theory  of  the  Church :  the  nature  of  grace,  the 
work  of  Christ,  the  conditions  of  salvation,  the  character  and 
place  of  faith ;  but  this  is  aside  from   my   purpose.     I   desire  I 
simply  to  call  attention  to  the  new  spirit  Avhich  has  taken  the  I 
place  of  the  old — the  spirit  of  Catholicism,   which  means  sub-l 
mission  to  an  external  authority  in  matters  both  of  faith  and  of 
practice,    and    dependence    upon    an    external    source    for   all 
needed  spiritual  supplies. 

To  what  was  this  change  of  spirit  due?  Under  what  con- 
ditions did  the  momentous  transformation,  which  has  been 
described,  take  place  ? 

It  is  noticeable,  first  of  all,  that  it  did  not  synchronize  with 
the  passage  of  Christianity  from  the  Jewish  to  the  Gentile  world. 
That  change  of  environment,  which  Christianity  underwent  so 
early  in  its  history,  was,  indeed,  of  vast  consequence.  In  natural- 
izing itself  on  Gentile  soil,  the  Christianity  of  the  early  Jewish 
disciples  underwent  certain  modifications,  which  were  of 
permanent  significance.  But  with  these  modifications,  im- 
portant as  they  are  for  an  understanding  of  the  history  of 
doctrine  and  of  ethics,  we  are  not  here  concerned.  It  is 
enough  to  point  out  the  fact,  that  the  spirit  of  religious  in- 
dividualism— the  spirit,  that  is,  of  primitive  Christianity — was  as 


22 

marked  a  feature  of  early  Gentile  as  of  early  Jewish  Christian- 
ity. We  have  only  to  read  Paul's  first  epistle  to  the 
Corinthians  to  form  an  idea  of  the  extent  to  which  it  controlled 
the  thought  and  life  of  that  important  Church. 

Moreover,  the  change  of  spirit,  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned, did  not  come  with  the  death  of  the  Apostles  and  the 
close  of  the  apostolic  age.  The  Church  of  the  first  half  of  the 
second  century  believed  ■  itself  to  be  just  as  truly  under 
the  immediate  control  of  the  Spirit  as  the  Apostolic  Church. 
There  was  the  same  consciousness  of  the  possession  of  super- 
natural gifts,  especially  of  the  gift  of  prophecy  ;  there  was  the 
same  sense  of  heavenly  citizenship ;  the  same  dependence  upon 
divine  guidance,  and  the  same  independence  of  an  external 
organism.  No  line,  in  fact,  was  drawn  between  their  own  age 
and  that  of  the  Apostles  by  the  Christians  of  the  early  second 
centur3\  They  were  conscious  of  no  loss,  either  of  light  or  of 
power.  Nothing  is  more  surprising,  to  one  who  has  been  ac- 
customed to  think  of  the  apostolic  age  as  distinguished  from 
all  other  ages  by  the  evident  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
than  to  read  certain  works  of  the  fathers  of  the  second  cen- 
tury which  take  for  granted  the  continued  manifestations  of 
that  Spirit  and  speak  familiarly  of  his  revelation  of  himself  in 
the  words  and  deeds  of  the  disciples.  The  names  of  many 
second  century  prophets  have  been  handed  down  to  us,  and 
the  author  of  the  Didache  has  much  to  say  about  such  prophets, 
who  were  evidently  numerous  in  his  day,  while  the  Shepherd 
of  Hermas  claims  to  be  itself  a  prophetic  work,  and  its  claims 
were  recognized  for  some  generations  by  the  Church  at  large. 
If  we  to-day  draw  a  line  between  the  apostolic  and  post-apostolic 
ages,  and  emphasize  the  supernatural  character  of  the  former 
as  distinguished  from  the  latter,  we  do  it  solely  on  dogmatic, 
not  on  historical  grounds.  We  may  have  a  priori  reasons — 
and  they  may  be  very  good  ones — for  making  such  a  distinc- 
tion, but  we    can    find  no  confirmation  of  it  in   our  sources. 


23 

The  change  of  spirit,  then,  which  marks  the  rise  of  the  Catholic 
Church  took  place  not  in  the  first  but  in  the  second  century. 
What  were  its  causes  ? 

In  general  terms  it  may  be  said  that  it  was  the  result  at 
once  of  the  secularization  of  the  Church  and  of  the  effort  of 
the  Church  itself  to  avoid  such  secularization. 

The  immediate  danger  confronting  the  Church  upon  its 
entrance  into  the  world  was  that  of  absorption  in  the  world, 
the  loss  of  its  distinctive  character — of  its  spiritual  and  ethical 
power, — the  disappearance  of  the  broad  line  which  separated 
it  from  the  world  and  all  its  interests.  This  danger  was 
keenly  felt  by  many  of  the  early  Christians,  and  they  struggled 
manfully  against  it.  The  believer's  heavenly  citizenship  and 
destiny  were  constantly  emphasized,  and  they  daily  reminded 
themselves  and  their  brethren  of  the  vanity  of  the  present 
world  and  of  the  speedy  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Lord. 
Thus  the  eschatological  element  is  very  prominent  in  the  litera- 
ture of  the  period.  "  Seeing  that  these  things  are  thus  all  to  be 
dissolved,  what  manner  of  persons  ought  ye  to  be  in  all  holy 
living  and  godliness,  looking  for  and  honestly  desiring  the 
coming  of  the  day  of  God,  b}^  reason  of  which  the  heavens 
being  on  fire  shall  be  dissolved,  and  the  elements  shall  melt 
with  fervent  heat  ?  "  are  the  words  of  II.  Peter  (iii.,  1 1,  12) ;  and 
the  Didache  is  equally  strenuous,  beginning  a  long  eschato- 
logical passage  with  the  admonition :  "  Watch  over  3'our  life. 
Let  not  your  lamps  be  quenched,  and  let  not  your  loins  be 
unloosed,  but  be  ye  ready  ;  for  ye  know  not  the  hour  in  which 
our  Lord  comes  "  (xvi.,  i).  The  Church  felt,  moreover,  that 
it  had  especial  reason  to  fear  ethical  deterioration  and  cor- 
ruption, under  the  influence  of  the  careless,  pleasure-loving 
spirit  and  of  the  licentious  habits  of  the  communities  in  which 
it  had  its  home.  The  duty  of  strict  moral  purity,  and  of 
serious  attention  to  the  higher  interests  of  the  soul,  was  there- 
fore earnestly  enforced,  and  the  infant  society  felt  itself  obliged 


24 

to  exercise  watchful  care  over  the  manners  and  morals  of  its 
members.  A  peculiarly  serious  and  earnest  tone  pervades  all 
the  early  Christian  documents  that  have  come  down  to  us,  and 
in  them  all  the  ethical  element  is  very  marked.  In  thus 
emphasizing  that  element  Christianity  was  true  to  its  founder, 
for  the  preaching  of  Christ  was,  above  all,  ethical ;  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  strikes  its  key-note." 

But  in  the  early  second  century  danger  began  to  threaten 
the  Church  from  another  quarter.  Up  to  that  time,  though 
Christianity  had  secured  some  converts  of  considerable  wealth 
and  social  distinction  in  Rome  and  doubtless  elsewhere,  it  had 
succeeded  in  making  little  impression  upon  the  more  distinctly 
educated  classes  of  society.  But  now  it  began  to  win  its 
way  gradually  even  among  them,  and  the  natural  consequence 
was  that  its  intellectual  elements  were  emphasized  as  they  had 
not  been  before. 

Attention  has  been  called  in  this  connection  to  the  spec- 
ulative character  of  the  Greek  mind  and  to  its  contrast  in  that 
respect  with  the  practical  Hebrew  mind,  and  it  has  been 
claimed  that  the  speculative  tendency  which  later  controlled 
Christian  theology  was  due  to  the  conversion  of  the  Greek 
world,  was  the  result  of  the  entrance  into  the  Church  of  the 
Greek  spirit.  There  is  much  truth  in  this  claim,  but  dis- 
crimination is  necessary.  It  is  a  fact  that  at  the  opening  of  the 
Christian  era  the  Greek  world  was  peculiarly,  and  to  a  degree 
not  witnessed  before  or  since,  a  philosophical  world  ;  not  in 
the  sense  that  there  were  great  creative  philosophers  then  at 
work  as  there  had  been  in  earlier  centuries,  but  in  the  sense 


*  A  difference,  however,  is  to  be  noticed  between  the  ethical  ideal  of  Christ 
and  that  of  many  in  the  early  Gentile  Church.  The  active  principle  of  love  for 
God  and  man,  which  constituted  the  sum  of  all  religion  according  to  Christ,  was 
still  taught  indeed,  but  in  consequence  of  the  conception  of  the  immediate  and  con- 
stant presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  in  opposition  to  the  moral  corruptness  of 
the  ao^e,  the  element  of  personal  holiness  or  purity  naturally  came  more  and  more 
to  the  front,  and  increasingly  obscured  the  fundamental  principle  of  Christ. 
But  this  change  of  emphasis  does  not  concern  us  here. 


25 

that  all  the  educated  world  philosophized.  But  it  is  to  be 
noticed  that  this  was  true  only  of  the  educated  world,  not  of 
the  common  people,  and  thus  we  find  that  early  Gentile 
Christianity  is  no  more  speculative  in  its  character  than  early 
Jewish  Christianity.  Moreover,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  in  the 
educated  Greek  world  of  the  period  with  which  we  are 
dealing,  two  distinct  philosophical  tendencies  may  be  clearly 
traced — the  one  ethical  and  practical,  the  other  religious  and 
speculative. 

All  the  philosophy  of  the  age  was,  indeed,  largely  religious 
in  its  character.  But  where  the  influence  of  Stoicism  pre- 
dominated the  ethical  element  came  to  the  front,  and  religion 
lost  its  independent  significance,  having  no  other  value  than  to 
promote  virtue  by  supplying  it  with  a  divine  basis  and  sanction. 
Philosophers  of  this  class  were  attracted  by  the  lofty  ethical 
ideals  of  Christianity  and  by  the  striking  realization  of  those 
ideals  in  the  lives  of  the  Christians,  and  they  came  into  the 
Church  in  large  numbers  during  the  second  century.  The 
tendency  which  they  represented  was  in  entire  harmony  with 
that  of  the  Hebrew  mind  and  of  early  Christianity  in  general. 
Their  entrance  into  the  Church  did  not  mean  at  all  the  trans- 
formation of  Christianity  into  a  system  of  speculative  philos- 
ophy. It  meant  continued  and  equally  forceful  emphasis 
upon  the  moral  element  in  the  Gospel,  and  the  employment  of 
philosophy  in  its  service  and  for  its  sake  alone.  Justin  Martyr 
is  a  case  in  point.  His  aim  as  a  Christian  philosopher  was  not 
speculative,  but  practical.  He  was  attracted  by  the  moral 
power  of  Christianity,  and  its  religious  character  interested  him 
only  because  it  formed  the  basis  of  that  power.  Its  superiority 
to  all  other  systems  of  philosophy  lay  chiefly  in  the  fact 
that  it  could  appeal  to  a  divine  revelation  for  its  moral  sanctions. 

The  influence  of  such  philosophers  tended,  indeed,  to  obscure 
the  peculiar  features  of  the  Christian  ethical  ideal,  to  substitute 
the   Stoic  conception  of  rights  and   duties  for   the    Christian 


26 

conception  of  self-denying  love,  but  it  did  not  tend  to  make 
Christianity  less  ethical.  With  such  philosophers  believers  in 
general  could  have  no  quarrel ;  they  found  in  them,  indeed, 
their  most  powerful  allies. 

But  there  was  another  tendency  which  was  growing  ever 
stronger,  and  during  the  second  century  was  more  and  more 
overshadowing  the  prevailingly  ethical  tendency  which  has 
been  described.  This  growing  tendency  was  distinctly  religious 
in  its  character.  It  had  its  roots  in  Platonism,  and  was  fostered 
by  the  increasing  sense  of  moral  evil  and  by  the  influence  of 
the  various  Oriental  cults  which  began  to  be  widely  felt  at  this 
time.  It  was  based  upon  an  essential  dualism  between  spirit 
and  matter,  between  God  and  the  world  ;  and  its  great  religious 
aim  was  the  release  of  the  spirit  of  man  from  the  thraldom  of 
the  things  of  sense  and  his  restoration  to  communion  with  the 
Divine ;  in  other  words,  his  redemption.  Stress  was  laid,  of 
course,  upon  conduct — but  only  as  a  means  to  an  end. 
By  asceticism — which  constituted  its  sum — a  man  was  to  free 
himself  as  far  as  possible  from  the  dominion  of  the  physical, 
and  thus  contribute  to  his  own  redemption.  The  dualistic 
principles  and  the  redemptive  interest  of  this  philosophy 
opened  many  cosmological  and  soteriological  questions,  and  thus 
promoted  speculation.  Indeed,  knowledge — the  communion 
of  the  finite  spirit  with  the  infinite,  through  an  acquaintance 
with  his  character  and  purposes — was  universally  regarded  by 
thinkers  of  this  school  as  a  chief  means  of  redemption.  The 
speculative  interest  thus  became  very  marked  and  in  many  cases 
seemed  to  overshadow  the  more  immediately  religious 
interest. 

The  general  tendency  which  has  been  described  bore  fruit 
ultimately  in  Neo-Platonism  ;  but  before  the  rise  of  the  eclectic 
system  to  which  that  name  is  given  it  had  quite  a  history 
within  the  Christian  Church.  During  the  early  second  century 
many  representatives  of  it,  recognizing  the  redemptive  element 


27 

in  the  Christian  system,  as  preached  by  the  Apostles,  were 
attracted  to  Christianity,  and  finding  in  it,  as  they  thought,  the 
solution  of  all  their  cosmological  and  soteriological  problems, 
they  regarded  it  as  the  supreme  revelation  of  God,  and  embraced 
it  with  eagerness  and  devoted  themselves  to  its  investigation 
and  elucidation.  By  the  application  to  the  simple  facts  of 
Christian  tradition  of  the  allegorical  method  of  interpretation, 
which  was  commonly  in  vogue  in  the  philosophical  schools  of 
the  day,  they  worked  out  an  elaborate  and  profound  system, 
in  some  respects  the  most  remarkable  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
These  Gnostics,  as  they  were  commonly  called,  were  the 
first  Christian  theologians  in  the  strict  sense — the  first  Christians 
to  treat  Christianity  as  a  system  of  philosophical  truth,  and  to 
make  it  as  such  the  subject  of  special  study.  With  their 
assumption  that  Christianity  is  a  revelation  from  God,  and 
hence  contains  truth  which  may  properly  be  made  the  object 
of  investigation,  no  Christian  of  that  day  would  have  quarreled. 
But  with  their  emphasis  of  the  intellectual  at  the  expense  of  the 
ethical  element  little  sympathy  could  be  felt  by  the  mass  of 
Christians;  and  their  theory  that  knowledge  is  a  condition  of 
salvation,  upon  which  they  based  their  claim  to  constitute  a 
spiritual  aristocracy  among  believers,  and  which  logically  leads 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  ignorant  and  simple-minded  from  the 
number  of  the  elect,  of  course  must  be  repulsive  to  the  common 
sentiment  of  the  Church  at  large.  Moreover,  their  treatment 
of  Christianity  gave  rise  to  the  fear  that  its  distinctive  features 
— its  ethical  and  spiritual  power — would  be  lost  sight  of  in  a 
maze  of  seemingly  profitless  speculations.  (Cf.  I.  Tim.,  vi.,  20.) 
But  the  final  rejection  of  Gnosticism  by  the  Christian  Church 
was  not  due  to  any  of  these  considerations.  The  Church  might 
ultimately  have  forgiven  the  Gnostics  their  peculiar  methods, 
and  might  have  compromised  with  their  theory  of  the  relation 
of  knowledge  to  salvation.  Indeed,  this  is  practically  what  the 
Church  did,  when,  later,  it  approved  and  adopted  the  specula- 


28 

tiv^e  theology  of  the  great  fathers  and  doctors.  But  the  Church 
could  not  accept-  the  Gnostics'  dualism,  which  involved  the 
impossibility  of  an  immediate  contact  between  God  and  matter, 
and  hence  meant  a  denial  of  the  identity  of  the  creating  God 
— the  God  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures — with  the  redeeming  God — 
the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ — and  the  consequent  rejection  of 
those  Scriptures  and  the  destruction  of  the  doctrine  of  Divine 
providence.  From  the  very  beginning,  the  Jewish  Scriptures, 
to  which  Christ  and  his  Apostles  had  so  frequently  appealed, 
had  been  appropriated  by  the  Christian  Church — the  true 
Israel  of  God — and,  interpreted  in  a  Christian  sense,  had 
become  to  Gentile  as  well  as  to  Jewish  Christians  the  great 
apologetic  weapon  with  which  they  were  able  to  establish,  at 
least  to  their  own  satisfaction,  the  divine  origin  of  their  religion, 
supernaturally  prophesied  and  prefigured  therein  so  long 
before  the  coming  of  the  Christ.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the 
common  Christian  sentiment  of  the  Church  at  large,  of  the 
educated  as  well  as  of  the  uneducated  portion  of  it,  should  take 
offence  at  doctrines  which  involved  the  repudiation  of  those 
Scriptures,  and  which,  moreover,  made  impossible  a  belief  in 
Divine  Providence,  in  a  God  ruling  the  kingdoms  and  peoples  of 
this  world  for  the  advantage  of  the  Church,  with  the  purpose 
of  bringing  them  all,  sooner  or  later,  into  subjection  to  the 
visible  kingdom  of  the  Christ.  The  spirit  of  Gnosticism,  it  is 
true,  lived  on  and  finally  won  a  permanent  place  within  the 
Church  ;  but  the  historic  form  in  which  it  clothed  itself  in  the 
early  second  century,  the  form  to  which  we  commonly  confine 
the  name,  could  not  and  did  not  find  acceptance.  The  com- 
mon instinct,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  of  the  Church  at  large  rebelled 
against  it,  and  it  was  very  widely  felt  that  it  must  be  distinctly 
and  definitely  repudiated.  It  was  in  the  effort  to  repudiate  it 
that  steps  were  taken  which  resulted  in  the  Catholic  Church 
and  in  the  permanent  disappearance  of  the  spirit  of  primitive 
Christianity. 


29 

These  steps  were  three :  first,  the  recognition  of  the  teach- 
ing of  the  Apostles  as  the  exclusive  standard  and  norm  of  Chris- 
tmn  truth  ;  second,  the  confinement  to  a  specific  office  (viz.,  the 
Catholic  office  of  bishop)  of  the  power  to  determine  what  is 
the  teaching  of  the  Apostles ;  and  third,  the  designation  of  a 
specific  institution  (viz.,  the  Catholic  Church)  as  the  sole  channel 
of  divine  grace.  These  three  steps  need  brief  examination. 
And  first  the  recognition  of  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  as  the 
exclusive  standard  and  norm  of  Christian  truth.  The  Gnostics 
claimed  apostolic  authority  for  their  doctrines,  appealing  not 
only  to  private  and  unrecorded  traditions  handed  down  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  but  also  to  writings  of  alleged  apostolic  origin. 
No  one,  of  course,  could  question  the  truth  of  apostolic  teach- 
ing, for  the  Apostles  were  universally  recognized  as  the  divinely 
commissioned  and  inspired  founders  of  the  Church.  But, 
if  this  were  the  case,  the  Gnostics,  whose  theology  was 
certainly  false,  must  be  in  error  in  appealing  to  their 
authority.  But  how  were  they  to  be  shown  to  be  in 
error?  In  other  words,  how  was  the  apostolic  to  be 
authoritativel}^  determined,  and  determined  so  clearly  and 
comprehensively  as  definitely  to  exclude  the  false  doctrines 
of  the  Gnostics  at  every  point?  It  was  in  seeking  an  answer 
to  this  question  that  the  Church  reached  the  conception  of  an 
authoritative  apostolic  Scripture  canon  and  of  an  authoritative 
apostolic  rule  of  faith. 

The  Gnostics  were  the  first  Christians  to  have  a  New  ^ 
Testament.  The  early  Church  needed  no  New  Testament, 
for  it  had  the  Old  which  it  interpreted  in  a  Christian  sense, 
and  which,  together  with  the  commonly  known  facts  of 
Christ's  life,  was  sufficient  for  all  purposes  ;  especially  since  the 
Holy  Spirit  was  in  the  Church  imparting  all  needed  truth  and 
light.  But  the  Gnostics  repudiated  the  Jewish  Scriptures  and 
regarded  Christianity  as  an  entirely  new  and  independent  reve- 
lation, and  hence  they  felt  themselves  impelled  at  an  early  date 


30 

to  form  a  canon  of  their  own,  which  should  contain  the  teach- 
ing of  Christ  through  his  Apostles,  which  should,  in  other 
words,  be  apostolic.  In  opposition  to  them  it  was,  of  course, 
necessary  for  the  Church  to  ask  whether  all  that  the  Gnostics 
accepted  was  really  apostolic,  and  thus  it  was  led  to  gather  into 
one  whole  all  those  writings  which  were  commonly  regarded 
as  of  apostolic  origin ;  in  other  words,  to  form  an  authoritative 
and  exclusive  apostolic  Scripture  canon,  which  all  who  wished 
to  be  regarded  as  Christian  disciples  must  acknowledge,  and 
whose  teachings  they  must  accept.  The  exact  extent  of  the 
canon,  it  is  true,  was  not  determined  at  once ;  uncertainty  as  to 
some  books  continued  for  many  generations.  But  the  concep- 
tion of  an  apostolic  Scripture  canon  had  arisen,  and  the  appeal 
to  that  canon  had  been  widely  made  before  the  close  of  the 
second  century. 

But  this  apostolic  canon  lacked  definiteness  as  a  stand- 
ard of  doctrine,  for,  though  it  presented  with  great  fullness 
the  teaching  of  the  Apostles,  it  was  quite  possible  for  the 
Gnostics,  if  they  wished,  to  accept  its  statements  and  yet  to 
read  into  them  by  the  allegorical  method  of  interpretation 
their  own  elaborate  systems.  Moreover,  the  books  of  the 
canon  contained  no  concrete  and  explicit  statement  of  the  com- 
mon faith  of  the  Church  which  could  be  set  over  against  the 
speculations  of  the  Gnostics,  and  which  they  could  be  clearly 
seen  to  have  contravened.  Something  still  more  definite  was 
plainly  needed,  and  that  was  found  in  the  apostolic  rule  of 
faith.  Already,  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
the  Church  of  Rome  had  a  baptismal  confession,  related  to  and 
resembling,  though  not  identical  with,  our  so-called  Apostles' 
Creed.  Two  things  are  noticeable  in  connection  with  this 
Roman  confession.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  clearly  an  anti- 
Gnostic  enlargement  of  the  formula  of  baptism,  into  the  names 
of  the  Father,  Son  and  Spirit,  which  was  in  general,  though  not 
in  universal,  use  in  the  early  second  century.     Its  evident  anti- 


31 

Gnostic  interest   makes  it  plain  that  it  was  not  formed  until 
after  the  opening  of  the  great  conflict,  that  it  was,  in  fact,  one  of 
the  fruits  of  that  conflict.     In  the  second   place,  it  contains  no 
ethical  element,   but  is  a  statement  of  belief  pure  and  simple. 
This  feature  of  it  is  a  very   striking  one,    for  we  know  from; 
other  sources  that  during  the  early  second  century  the  instruct 
tion  given  to  candidates  for  baptism  and  the  conditions  required 
of  them  were  largely,  if  not  exclusively,  ethical.     The  Roman 
confession  thus  marks  a  change  of   emphasis  which  was  due 
chiefly,  no  doubt,  to  the  Gnostic  conflict.     The  Didache  is  very 
instructive  in  this  connection.     Though  it  gives  explicit  direc- 
tions in  regard  to  the  administration  of  baptism,  it  has  nothing 
to  say  about  a  confession  of  faith,  but  requires  the  candidate  to 
be  instructed  in  the  principles  of  Christian   ethics  and  in  the 
duties  of  the  Christian  life  before  receiving  baptism.     In  fact, 
the  word  diSax^h  or  teaching,  as  originally  used,  signified  ethi- 
cal, not  doctrinal,  instruction.     It  is  true  that,  from  the  beginning, 
belief  in  one   God   and   in  Jesus   Christ  was  demanded  of  all 
converts,  but  such  belief  was  commonly  taken  for  granted — the 
formula  of  baptism  itself  implied  it — and  all  the  emphasis  was 
laid  upon  the  ethical  element."^     But  in  opposition  to  Gnosti- 
cism the  Christian  congregations  instinctively  formulated  those 
beliefs  which    had    hitherto    been  taken    for  granted,  and  de- 
manded  of  their  converts   explicit   assent  to  them.     Various 
local  confessions  thus  grew   up,  but,  based  upon  the  common 

*  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  Pliny,  in  his  epistle  to  Trajan  concerning  the 
Christians,  says  nothing  of  a  confession  of  faith,  but  that  he  speaks  of  the  oath  with 
which  they  bound  themselves,  '•  not  with  a  view  to  the  commission  of  some  crime, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  would  not  commit  theft,  nor  robbery,  nor  adultery, 
that  they  would  not  break  faith,  nor  refuse  to  restore  a  dej)Osit  when  asked  for  it." 
Compare  also  the  Elkesaites'  formula  of  baptism  as  reported  by  Ilippolytus  : 
♦'Behold,  I  call  to  witness  the  heaven  and  the  water,  and  the  holy  spirits,  and  the 
angels  of  prayer,  and  the  oil  and  the  salt  and  the  earth.  I  testify  by  these  seven 
witnesses  that  I  will  no  more  sin,  nor  commit  adulter}',  nor  steal,  nor  be  guilty  of 
injustice,  nor  be  covetous,  nor  be  actuated  by  hatred,  nor  be  »-cornful,  nor  will  I 
take  pleasure  in  any  wicked  deeds.  Having  uttered  these  words,  let  him  be 
baptized  in  the  name  of  the  Mighty  and  Most  High  God." 


32 

baptismal  formula  and  animated  by  a  common  anti-Gnostic 
interest,  as  they  all  were,  they  naturally  resembled  each  other 
in  their  main  features,  however  widely  they  differed  in  details. 
Before  the  end  of  the  second  century  we  find,  for  instance, 
in  Irenasus  and  Tertullian,  a  distinct  recognition  of  the 
existence  of  a  rule  of  faith  and  emphasis  upon  its  apostolic 
character.  It  is  an  authoritative  standard,  because  it  con- 
tains the  teachings  of  the  Apostles,  and  by  it  therefore 
all  would-be  Christian  doctrines  are  to  be  tested.  The  con- 
ception of  such  an  official  standard,  expressing  the  faith  of 
the  Catholic  Church  as  distinguished  from  all  heretical 
bodies,  was  practically  universal  soon  after  the  opening  of 
the  third  century ;  though  it  Avas  only  at  a  later  period 
that  any  particular  creed  or  confession  gained  oecumenical 
authority,  only  later  that  the  Church  at  large  had  a  defi- 
nite rule  of  faith  which  was  everywhere  the  same.  When 
the  apostolic  Scripture  canon  had  arisen,  this  rule  of  faith 
became,  of  course,  a  guide  to  its  interpretation,  but  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  the  rule  of  faith  was  not  derived  from  the  New 
Testament.  In  fact,  in  form  and  substance  it  is  older  than 
the  New  Testament,  though  the  conception  of  it  as  an  official 
apostolic  standard  doubtless  had  its  rise  at  about  the  same  time 
as  the  latter,  or  even  a  little  later.  With  the  recognition  of  these 
two  official  standards — Scripture  canon  and  rule  of  faith — the 
first  step  referred  to  above,  the  treatment  of  the  teaching  of 
the  Apostles  as  the  exclusive  standard  and  norm  of  Christian 
truth,  was  complete. 

But  it  will  be  evident  at  a  glance  that  the  step  which  was 
thus  taken  was  of  stupendous  significance.  Christians  had,  of 
course,  always  reverenced  the  Apostles  and  had  looked  upon 
them  as  divinely  guided  and  inspired,  and  their  teaching  was 
consequently  everywhere  regarded  as  a  source  from  which 
might  be  gained  a  knowledge  of  divine  truth.  But  that  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  making  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles 


33 

the  sole  standard  oi  truth,  a  very  different  thing  from  ascribing  \ 
to  their  teaching   exclusive    normative   authority.      The  only 
authority  which  was  recognized  was  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  he 
was  supposed  to  speak  to  Christians  of  the  second  century  as 
truly  as  he  had   ever  spoken  through  the  Apostles.     Christian 
believers  had,  in  fact,  from  the  beginning— as  has  been  already 
said— believed  themselves  in  immediate  contact  with  the  Holy 
Spirit  and  had  looked  chiefly  and  directly  to  him  for  revela- 
tions of  truth,  as  such  truth  might  be  needed.     Now,  under  the 
stress  of  conflict,  they  resigned  their  lofty  privileges  and  made 
the  Apostles  the  sole  recipients  (under  the  new  dispensation)  of 
divine  communications,  and  thus  their  teaching  the  only  source 
(the  Old  Testament,  of  course,  excepted)  for  a  knowledge  of 
Christian  truth,  and  the  sole  standard  and  norm  of  such  truth.  The 
consequences  of  the  step  which  has  been  described  were  many 
and  momentous.  •  It  is  enough  here  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  to  it  is  due  the  pernicious  notion  that  apostolic  authority 
is  necessary  for  every  element  of  the  Christian  system,  and  the 
consequent  practice — which  was  for  centuries  universal  and  is 
still  too  widely  prevalent— of  carrying  back  all  the  doctrines,  in- 
stitutions and  usages,  which  we  ourselves  accept,  into  the  apos- 
tolic age  in  order  to  find  confirmation  of  them  there.    To  it  is  also 
due  the  fusion  of  the  Apostles  into  one  composite  whole,  and  the 
consequent  loss  of  a  sense  of  their  individuality,  which   has 
lasted  so  long  that  even  to-day  the  scholar  becomes  an  object 
of  suspicion  in  many  quarters,  who  ventures  to  treat  I  hem  as 
historic  figures  and  to  exhibit  their  teachings  in  historic  relation 
to  their  characters  and  lives.    To  it  is  largely  due,  on  the  other 
hand,  much  of  the  knowledge  of  the  apostolic  age  which  we 
possess,  for  had   the  original  conception  of  continuing  divine 
revelations  been  retained,  there  would  have  seemed  little  reason 
for  preserving  apostolic  writings  and  traditions. 

The  rise  of  the  apostolic  Scripture  canon  and  of  the  apos- 
tolic rule  of  faith  has  been  traced,  but  the  process  did  not  stop 


34 

here.  It  was  soon  seen  that  even  the  rule  of  faith — definite 
as  it  is— was  inadequate  to  the  emergency  in  which  Christians 
found  themselves.  For  it  was  possible,  as  it  transpired,  to 
interpret  even  this  brief  and  seemingly  explicit  confession 
in  more  than  one  way.  Moreover,  the  Gnostics  could  and  did 
question  its  apostolic  origin,  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that 
it  was  nowhere  to  be  found  in  the  extant  writings  of  the 
Apostles,  and  that  the  Church  possessed  no  guarantee  of  its 
correct  transmission.  In  reply  to  this  objection  it  was  claimed 
that  the  Apostles  had  founded  certain  churches  and  that  in 
them  their  teaching  must  be  preserved  in  its  purest  form.  But 
such  an  assumption  was  of  little  value,  until  a  dogmatic  basis 
was  found  for  it  in  the  theory  that  the  bishops  of  such 
churches  had  received  from  God  through  the  agency  of  the 
Apostles — Avho  had  appointed  and  ordained  them — an  official 
grace  which  enabled  them  to  preserve  and  to"  transmit  without 
error  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  committed  to  them.  They 
thus  became  vouchers  for  the  genuineness  of  the  Church's 
creed  and  for  its  correct  transmission.  Moreover,  since  the 
teaching  of  the  Apostles  handed  down  to  them  must  include 
also  the  Apostles'  interpretation  of  that  teaching,  they  became 
at  the  same  time  the  authoritative  expounders  of  the  Church's 
creed.  The  extension  of  the  prerogatives  of  the  bishops  of 
certain  churches  to  the  bishops  of  all  churches,  followed  very 
speedily  and  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  great  oecumenical 
councils,  in  which  speaks  the  voice  of  the  collective  episcopate, 
were  one  of  its  results.  But  that  is  a  matter  of  minor  concern. 
I  am  interested  here  only  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
Church  was  now  in  possession  not  only  of  an  authoritative 
apostolic  doctrine,  but  also  of  a  permanent  apostolic  office, 
whose  existence  insures  at  all  times  the  accurate  transmission 
and  the  infallible  interpretation  of  that  doctrine.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  decisive  quality  of  this  office,  as  of  the  New 
Testament  canon  and  the  rule  of  faith,  is  its  apostolicity.     The 


35 

episcopate  is  not  a  channel  for  the  reception  of  new  revela- 
tions from  God,  but  only  for  the  transmission  of  revelations  re- 
ceived by  the  Apostles.  The  first  step  was  to  recognize  the 
exclusive  authority  of  apostolic  teaching,  the  next  was  to  con- 
fine to  a  particular  ofBce  the  power  to  transmit  and  to  interpret 
that  teaching.  The  believer  was  thus  permanently  denied  not 
only  the  privilege  of  receiving  divine  revelations,  but  also  the 
right  to  interpret  for  himself  the  revelations  received  jind 
transmitted  by  the  Apostles. 

But  there  remained  to  be  taken  a  final  step.     In  order  to  be 
saved  it  was  already  necessary  to  accept  and.  to  recognize  the 
normative  authority  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Apostles,  as  con- 
tained in  the  New  Testament  canon  and  in  the  rule  of  faith,  and  as 
interpreted  by  the  Catholic  Church  through  her  bishops.     But 
one  might  do  this — might  be  in  his  beliefs  entirely  in  accord 
with  the  doctrinal  position  of  the  Church  as  thus  defined — and 
yet  remain  without  the  Catholic  Church,  yet  receive  saving 
grace  directly  from  God,  and  thus,  at  least,  his  ultimate  spiritual 
right  as  a  child   of  God  be  preserved.     But  in  the  end  the 
Catholic  Church  denied  him  even  that.  In  the  end  membership 
in  that  Church  was  insisted  upon  as  essential  to  salvation.    The 
grounds  of  this  final  step  may  be  very  briefly  stated.     In  the 
beginning,  the  basis  of  the  unity  of  the  Church  was  found  in  the 
possession  of  the  Holy  Spirit.     The  Church  was  one  because 
all  its  members  possessed  one  Spirit.     The  Church,  as  distinct 
from    its   members,    did    not   possess   the    Spirit ;   indeed,   the 
Church  possessed  nothing  independently  of  them.     But,  in  con- 
nection  with  the  process  which  has  been  described,  the  idea 
gained  prevalence  that  the  special  work  of  the  Apostles,  as  the 
founders  of  the  Church,  had  been  to  transmit  a  deposit  of  truth 
which  they  had  received  from  Christ,  and  in  the  possession  of 
that  truth  consequently  the  unity  of  the  Church  was  increasingly 
thought  to  consist.     But  that  truth  had  been  transmitted,  not 
to  individual  believers,  but  only  to  the  official  successors  of  the 


36 

Apostles — to  the  bishops  of  a  particular  institution.  The  unity 
of  the  Church  was  therefore  realized,  not  in  the  possession  of 
the  transmitted  deposit  of  truth  by  its  members  in  general,  or 
by  any  particular  class  of  them  as  such,  but  in  the  possession 
of  that  truth  by  its  officers  as  officers.  Their  official  character, 
of  course,  necessarily  involved  the  Church's  institutional 
character;  and  thus  the  Church,  as  an  institution,  possessed 
something-  which  it  did  not  owe  to  its  members.  As  an  institu- 
tion, with  an  apostolic  office,  it  now  had  an  independent  value 
of  its  own.  As  its  bishops  constituted  the  sole  depositary  of 
apostolic  truth,  without  which  truth  there  is  no  Church,  it 
must  be  the  only  Church.  A  person  outside  of  its  communion, 
therefore,  could  not  be  a  member  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  But 
from  the  beginning  the  Church  of  Christ,  i.  e.,  Christian 
believers,  had  been  regarded  as  the  exclusive  sphere  of  the 
Spirit's  action;  only  to  that  Church,  i.  e.,  only  to  Christian 
believers,  had  the  Spirit's  presence  been  promised  by  Christ. 
Now  that  the  visible  institution,  as  an  institution,  had  taken  the 
place  of  believers  as  such,  the  Spirit  acted  only  in  that  institu- 
tion ;  and  hence  solvation,  which,  of  course,  depends  upon  the 
possession  of  the  Spirit,  was  possible  only  within  the  Catholic 
Church. 

But  this  means  that  the  Church  which  has  hitherto  been  a 
community  of  saints,  all  of  whose  members  are  holy,  must  now 
become  an  ark  of  salvation — a  corpus  permixtum — containing 
both  saints  and  sinners ;  for  to  exclude  from  its  privileges 
any  one  who  may  desire  to  enjoy  them  is  to  deprive  him  not 
of  the  certainty,  as  heretofore,  but  of  the  possibility  of  salvation. 
The  result  must,  of  course,  be  a  relaxation  of  the  Church's 
principles  and  methods  of  discipline — a  relaxation  which  was 
first  distinctly  avowed  by  Bishop  Callixtus,  of  Rome  (217-222). 
The  process  I  have  been  tracing — the  process  which  led  to  the 
belief  that  there  is  no  salvation  without  the  Catholic  Church — 
is  a  purely  logical  one.     But  it  was  promoted  by  the  natural 


37 

and  increasing  tendency  toward  consolidation,  which  was 
especially  marked  in  the  late  second  century,  the  tendency, 
that  is,  to  lay  emphasis  upon  the  external  and  visible  unity  of 
believers.  A  unity  of  spirit  naturally  strives  to  express  itself  in 
the  form  of  a  visible  bond,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Christian 
Church  the  tendency  toward  such  expression  was  enhanced  by 
constant  intercourse  between  distant  churches,  by  the  pressure 
of  the  state  and  by  the  desire  to  withstand  the  disintegrating 
effects  of  heresy. 

When  the  last  of  the  three  steps  described  had  been 
taken — when  a  visible  institution  had  become  the  exclusive 
channel  of  divine  grace — the  Catholic  Church  was  complete. 
But  it  must  be  remarked  that  none  of  the  steps  which  we  have 
traced  could  have  been  taken,  had  not  the  conflict  which 
resulted  in  them  been  preceded  by  a  partial  loss  of  the  original 
consciousness  of  the  immediate  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  assumption  by  the  Church  of  spiritual  privileges  which 
had  originally  belonged  to  all  believers,  took  place  only  when 
the  consciousness  of  possessing  those  privileges  had  become 
less  general  than  it  had  once  been.  It  is  not  surprising  that  it 
should  have  grown  less  general,  for  as  time  passed  the  number 
became  constantly  greater  of  those  who  were  Christians 
chiefly  because  they  were  born  of  Christian  parents,  and  as  the 
Church  grew  stronger  and  more  conspicuous,  half-hearted  and 
worldly-minded  converts  were  increasingly  attracted  to  it. 
But  the  primitive  spirit  continued  fresh  and  vivid  in  many 
quarters,  and  finally  asserted  itself,  though  in  perverted  form 
and  not  without  the  admixture  of  fanaticism,  in  the  movement 
known  as  Montanism.  That  movement  was  in  essence  simply 
the  endeavor  of  Christians  who  believed  themselves  to  be  still 
in  possession  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  to  resist  the  spoliation  of  their 
spiritual  rights.  The  vigor  of  the  movement  and  the  wide 
favor  with  which  it  met  prove  incontrovertibly  that  the  spirit 
of  primitive  Christianity  was  by  no  means  extinct.      But  the 


38 

Church  at  large  had  too  widely  lost  that  spirit  and  had  felt  too 
keenly  in  its  strife  with  Gnosticism  the  need  of  definite  standards 
and  of  a  compact  organization,  to  be  able  to  accept  the 
Montanists'  doctrine  of  continuing  divine  revelations,  and  to  be 
willing  to  recognize  the  authority  and  to  follow  the  guidance 
of  their  alleged  God-inspired  prophets.  The  result  was  the 
final  exclusion  of  the  Montanists  from  the  Catholic  Church,  and 
in  opposition  to  them  increasing  emphasis  upon  the  very  process 
against  which  they  had  rebelled.  The  final  victory  of  the 
spirit  of  Catholicism  over  the  primitive  spirit,  which  in 
Montanism  had  made  a  last  desperate  effort  to  avoid  annihi- 
lation, marks  the  secularization  of  the  Christian  Church. 
That  secularization  was  not  due,  as  has  been  so  widely 
thought,  to  the  favors  shown  the  Church  by  the  Emperor 
Constantine,  or  to  the  ultimate  union  of  Church  and  state. 
The  Church  was  in  principle  secularized  as  completely  as  it 
ever  was  long  before  the  birth  of  Constantine.  The  union  of 
Church  and  state  was  but  a  ratification  of  a  process  already 
complete,  and  is  itself  of  minor  significance.  At  the  close  of  the 
conflict  with  Montanism,  the  Church,  instead  of  being  an  ideal 
unity  of  saints,  whose  citizenship  is  in  heaven  alone,  had 
become  a  visible  institution,  embracing  both  saints  and 
sinners,  both  the  heavenly  and  worldly-minded  ;  had  become^ 
in  fact,  an  institution  not  only  in  but  largely  <?/"the  world.  Its 
forms  of  government  were  the  forms  of  the  world  in  which  it 
dwelt;  it  was  controlled  by  human  leaders;  its  members  were 
subject  to  human  authority.  There  was  still,  to  be  sure,  a 
theory  of  divine  control  and  guidance,  but  the  divine  element 
had  been  so  minimized  by  the  arbitrary  limitation  of  its  channel 
of  operation  and  of  its  sphere  of  action  that  immediate  con- 
sciousness of  it  was  largely  lost  and  its  influence  practically 
annulled.  The  secularization  of  the  Church  was  evidently 
largely  due — as  remarked  in  the  beginning — to  its  own  effort  to 
avoid  secularization.     It  found  no  better  way  to  repel  the  influ- 


39 

ence  of  a  false  philosophy  than  to  empty  itself  of  its  spiritual 
heritage,  denude  itself  of  its  spiritual  power,  and  do  battle  in 
worldly  armor.  It  won  its  victory,  but  it  paid  dearly  for  it, 
and  it  was,  at  best,  but  a  partial  triumph.* 

I  shall  hardly  excite  surprise  after  all  that  has  been  said  if 
I    declare   my  dissatisfaction   with   the   prevalent  divisions  of 
Church  History.     The  epoch  marked  by  the  rise  of  the  Catholic 
Church  has  been  employed  in  recent  years  to  divide  the  history 
of  doctrine  into  two  great  periods :  its  rise  and  its  develop- 
ment.    And   this   division    has  already    proved    very    fruitful, 
and  has  materially  contributed  to  a  right  understanding  of  the 
subject.      I  am  convinced  that  the  epoch  in  question  is  just  as 
decisive  for  the  history  of  the  Church  as  for  the  history    of 
doctrine,  and  I  venture  to  think  that  the  emphasis  of  the  pro- 
cess  which  we  have  been  considering,  that   would  result  from 
the   general   employment   of   that   epoch   in  the  treatment  of 
Church    History,  would    do  much   to  clarify    our  conception 
both  of  the  nature   of  Christianity  and  of  the  character  of  its 
development.     I   have  rejoiced  to  see,  since  my  own  opinions 
on  this  subject  were  formed,  that  in  at  least  two  recent  Church 
histories,  the  epoch  of  which  I  speak  has  been  given  partial 
recognition,  being  made  to  mark  a  subordinate  division  in  the 
history  of  the  ancient  Church.f     But  that  is  not  enough  ;  for 


*  I  would  not  be  misunderstood.  It  is  not  my  intention  to  pass  condemnation 
upon  the  Catholic  Church,  whether  in  its  early  undivided  state,  or  in  its  Greek  or  Latin 
form.  The  Holy  Spirit  has  revealed  himself  in  the  past  and  still  reveals  himself  to 
the  members  of  that  Church,  if  they  keep  themselves  in  touch  with  him,  as  truly  as 
to  members  of  the  primitive  Church.  Indeed  the  Holy  Spirit  has  doubtless  spoken 
in  the  past  and  still  speaks  in  and  through  the  Catholic  Church,  as  we  believe  that 
he  has  spoken  in  the  past  and  still  speaks  in  and  through  other  communions  of  the 
one  great  Church  of  Christ.  All  I  have  desired  to  do  in  this  connection  is  to  point  I 
out  the  difference  between  the  spirit  of  primitive  and  the  spirit  of  Catholic  Christi- 
anity, and  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  growth  of  the  latter,  though  it 
does  not  prevent,  does  hinder,  the  free  action  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in  the  hearts  and 
upon  the  minds  of  Christian  men,  and  to  that  degree  marks  the  secularization  of 
the  Church. 

t  I  refer  to  the  admirable  histories  of  Moeller  and  MuIIer. 


40 

the  epoch  in  question  marks  itself  the  close  of  ancient  Church 
History— the  close  of  the  history  of  primitive  Christianity. 
Between  that  day  and  this  the  Catholic  Church  has  known  no 
epoch  of  commensurate  importance.  That  Church,  indeed,  is 
still  living  in  the  period  which  opened  then  ;  it  has  had  no 
modern  age.  With  the  Reformation,  when  the  Catholic 
principle  was  definitely  rejected,  a  new  age  opened  for  a  part 
of  the  Church  of  Christ,  but  only  for  a  part.  The  history 
of  Protestantism,  therefore,  rightly  constitutes  a  third  division  ; 
but  to  make  the  Reformation  mark  the  beginning  of  a  new  age 
in  the  history  of  the  Catholic  Church  is,  as  Protestants,  to 
arrogate  to  our  own  faith  a  degree  of  influence  which  it  has 
unfortunately  never  possessed.  It  may  be  claimed  that  con- 
venience justifies  the  ordinary  divisions,  and  that  it  justifies  the 
separation  of  the  history  of  the  Catholic  Church  (at  least  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church)  since  the  Reformation  from  its 
history  before  that  time,  but  this  I  can  no  longer  believe,  for 
convenience  has  no  right  to  dictate  a  method  of  treatment 
which  does  violence  to  the  subject  treated  and  obscures  its 
true  character.  I  venture  to  think,  indeed,  that  the  division 
suggested — the  division  into  the  primitive,  the  Catholic,  and 
the  Protestant  Church — will  prove  not  only  more  logical  than 
any  other,  but  equally  convenient. 

It  may  seem  that  I  am  using  the  term  Catholic  in  too  narrow 
a  sense  when  I  thus  distinguish  the  Catholic  Church  from  the 
primitive  Church  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  Protestant 
Church  on  the  other ;  and  I  may  be  reminded  that  we  Protest- 
ants regard  ourselves  as  a  part  of  the  Catholic  Church  when 
we  give  utterance  in  the  Apostles'  Creed  to  our  belief  in  the 
''  Holy  Catholic  Church."  But  the  phrase  "  Catholic  Church  " 
has  two  radically  different  senses,  the  one  inclusive,  the  other 
exclusive;  and  I  have  purposely  employed  it  throughout  this 
address  in  the  latter  sense  alone.  Much  confusion  has  resulted 
from  the  fact  that  a  double  meaning  thus  attaches  to  the  word 


41 

Catholic,  and  from  the  failure  to  keep  its  two  meanings  distinct. 
Originally,  as  was  remarked  above,  the  phrase  "  Catholic 
Church  "  meant  simply  the  Church  universal — the  totality  of 
believers — and  in  that  sense  we  too,  who  are  Protestants,  are 
members  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  and  God  grant  that 
we  may  ever  be  !  But  early  in  the  third  century  the  phrase 
acquired  another  and  exclusive  sense  which  soon  became  tech- 
nical, and  which  has  attached  to  it  ever  since.  In  this,  its 
technical  sense,  it  denotes  not  the  Church  universal,  but  the 
particular  visible  institution  whose  rise  I  have  endeavored  to 
trace — an  institution  claiming  to  be  the  orthodox  Apostolic 
Church  and  the  exclusive  channel  of  divine  grace,  and  as  such 
arrogating  to  itself  the  title  of  "  universal  Church,"  and  dis- 
tinguishing itself  from  all  other  bodies  of  Christians,  which  are 
pronounced  by  it,  because  without  its  pale,  schismatical  and 
alien  from  the  household  of  faith.  The  Greek  and  Roman 
Catholic  Churches  are  but  localizations  of  this  one  Catholic 
Church  which  existed  in  its  undivided  form  for  some  centuries 
before  their  separation.  The  term  Catholic,  therefore,  in  the 
narrow  technical  sense  described,  applies  equally  to  the  undi- 
vided Church  of  the  third  and  subsequent  centuries  and  to  the 
Greek  and  Roman  Churches  since  their  separation." 

*  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  word  catholic  did  not  occur  in  the  old  Roman 
symbol  which  formed  the  basis  of  our  Apostles'  Creed.  In  that  symbol  the  phrase 
"  Holy  Church  "  was  used  where  the  later  creed  has  "  Holy  Catholic  Church. "  The 
word  catholic  did  not  become  a  part  of  the  creed  until  tlie  fifth  century,  and  bore 
from  the  beginning  the  exclusiv^e  and  technical  sense  which  has  been  defined. 
Historically,  therefore,  the  phrase  "  Holy  Catholig  Church  "  in  the  Apostles'  Creed 
does  not  mean  the  Clmrch  universal,  but  a  visible  institution  claiming  for  itself 
apostolicity  and  orthodoxy  as  distinguished  from  all  schismatic  and  heretical 
bodies.  It  is  true  that  this  exclusive  Church  claimed  to  be  universal,  but  it  could 
do  so  only  by  denying  the  Christianity  of  all  other  Christian  communions,  whose 
membership  was  by  no  means  insignificant  during  early  centuries. 

Luther  allowed  the  phrase  sanctam  ecclesiarn  catholicatn  to  stand  in  the  Latin 
creed,  but  repudiated  its  historic  interpretation  and  gave  to  the  adjective  catholica 
i\i&  y^x'\vc\\WvG.  ?,&x\'s,e.  oi  general  ox  universal.  In  his  German  version  of  the  creed 
(in  agreement  with  some  mediiieval  recensions  of  the  symbol)  he  substituted  the 
word  Christian  for  Catholic,  rendering  the  phrase  "eine  heilige  christliche  Kirche," 
in  which  chang^e  he  has  been  followed  bv  the  Lutheran  Church. 


42 

We  have  studied  together,  for  a  little,  the  most  momentous 
transformation  that  the  Church  has  ever  undergone,  and  our 
study  cannot  have  failed  to  make  it  clear  that  the  effects  of 
that  transformation  are  still  felt,  not  only  in  the  Catholic,  but 
also  in  the  Protestant  Church.  The  Protestant  Reformation 
was  a  revival  of  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity,  but  elements 
of  Catholicism  were  retained  which  materially  modified  the 
forms  of  that  spirit's  expression,  and  which  have  served  to  make 
the  Protestant  a  different  thing  from  the  primitive  church. 
Must  these  elements,  then,  be  necessarily  rejected?  Must 
Protestantism,  without  more  ado,  cast  them  all  off  and  return  to 
the  simplicity  of  the  primitive  Church?  To  maintain  this 
would  be  to  misread  history's  lessons ;  for  if  the  study  of  the 
history  of  the  Church  teaches  anything,  it  is  the  transforming 
power  of  the  Christian  spirit,  its  power  to  put  its  own  stamp 
upon,  to  mould  into  its  own  likeness,  elements  even  of  late  and 
foreign  origin.  By  the  degree  to  which  they  give  expression 
to  that  spirit  is  the  value  of  such  elements,  and  of  all  elements, 
to  be  measured.  If  they  contribute  to  its  clear,  and  just,  and 
full  expression,  they  vindicate  their  right  to  a  place  within 
the  Christian  system  ;  if  they  hinder  that  spirit's  action,  they 
must  be  condemned. 

The  Protestant  Reformation  was,  indeed,  a  revival  of  the 
spirit  of  primitive  Christianity,  for  it  restored  to  the  individual 
believer  those  spiritual  rights  of  which  the  Catholic  Church 
had  largely  deprived  him,  and  made  the  Holy  Spirit,  which 
voices  itself  both  in  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  and  in  the 
enhghtened  Christian  consciousness  of  true  believers,  theonly 
source  and  standard  of  spiritual  truth.  But  Protestantism  did 
not  repudiate,  it  retained  the  Catholic  conception  of  an  apostolic 
Scripture  canon — a  conception  which  the  primitive  Church 
had  entirely  lacked.  That  conception,  however,  was  no  longer 
what  it  had  been  in  the  Catholic  Church,  for  it  was  brought  by 
the   reformers   into   harmony    with    the  primitive    conception 


43 

•of  the  continued  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  hearts  of  true 
believers.  This  fact  alone  it  is  which  can  justify  Protestants 
in  retaining  the  Scriptures  as  a  rule  of  faith  and  practice  while 
rejecting  the  Catholics'  appeal  to  ecclesiastical  tradition.  The 
true  statement  of  the  Protestant  position  is  not  that  the  Word 
of  God,  contained  in  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  but  that  the  Spirit  of  God  is  the  sole  and  ultimate 
authority  for  Christian  truth — the  Spirit  of  God  who  spoke 
through  the  Apostles  and  who  still  speaks  to  his  people.  It  is 
agreed,  indeed,  that  the  voice  of  that  Spirit  must  accord  always 
with  itself ;  and  hence,  though  it  may  indicate  to  the  heart  of 
the  believer  that  this  or  that  which  has  been  commonly 
regarded  as  apostolic  is  not  really  so,  it  cannot  contradict  the 
genuine  teaching  of  the  Apostles,  who,  according  to  the  Re- 
formers, enjoyed  that  Spirit's  presence  in  abounding  measure. 
Thus  Protestantism,  while  remaining  true  to  the  Christian 
spirit  which  had  voiced  itself  in  the  primitive  Church,  adopted 
a  regulative  principle  which  that  Church  had  lacked  ;  and  it 
may  thus  be  held  to  mark  a  real  advance,  for  in  it,  as  nowhere 
else,  the  essential  spirit  of  Christianity  may  find,  and  has  at 
times,  without  doubt,  found,  not  only  free,  but  also  clear  and 
just  expression. 


Manufactured  bu 

GAYLORD  BROS.  Inc. 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 


Date  Due 


Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  01036  7029 


